Wednesday, October 01, 2008

So Much Navel Gazing, I May Be A Citrus Fruit

Back in late July I twittered this little gem:

Therapist says I’m funny because of some deep and lingering psychological damage and a rapacious need to be loved. “Yay! I’m funny!”

I followed that up a week or so ago with:

@cleversimon then there are those of us who tell jokes to get people to like us while also keeping them emotionally distant. #therapy_baby!

So guess what I’ve been doing for a while?

Yeah, I started therapy about a year ago.

I’m not going to write about exactly why, but I will say this, I have hated almost every second I’ve gone. (Standing appointment every week, thanks very much; I take that unending, unswerving frequency to mean that I’m chuck full of screwy, though I’ve missed a few appointments here and there.)

Seriously. Hated. It.

I hate going. I hate the reasons why I have to go. I hate how long it takes to get to her office. I hate her stupid People and Fish & Stream magazines in the waiting room. I hate cracking open my brain every single time. I hate how I feel while I’m there in a session, pouring out all my emotional blather and letting it spill onto her ugly industrial carpeted floor. I hate writing the check out at the end of the hour and handing it over. I hate replaying back everything I said on the drive back to work. I hate thinking about all stuff I dashed out in the time between appointments.

Which is not to say that it hasn’t been enormously helpful to me.

Seriously.

I just might have figured out a whole lot about why I am the way I am and all kinds of other stuff. If therapy were an Ebay auction, I’d give it feedback of “A+++++++ Highly recommended! Would divulge deepest emotional drivel again!” I’m a big fan of therapy, though frankly, I’d rather be telling other people to go, rather than being there myself. Every. Blesséd. Week.

Again, I’m not going to delve into the depths about why I decided to start going to therapy or any of the reasons for my emotional blather, but I do want to tell a story and then ramble on for a while longer about what it all means.

Last week we left the kids with my Mom who recently moved here to Salt Lake and we went to Colorado Springs, CO. Reha had a week long conference that kept her busy during the days, but we got to play at night. And by play, I mean that we got treated to enormously expensive (and tasty) dinners in the company of her office colleagues, bosses and other important people.

At the end of one of those dinners, after an evening of pleasant conversation and very good food, and me generally on my best behavior, the server began taking dessert orders. He started at the opposite end from me. Everyone, the bosses and the bosses’ spouses said they were stuffed. People hemmed and hawed and ordered “a small scoop of ice cream,” a dessert with “two spoons please, we’ll share” or no dessert at all, “I’m so full, thanks!” The waiter came to me, and by this time the full table of twelve had gotten inexplicably quiet and essentially everyone was staring at me.

I looked the server straight in the eye, cleared my throat and ostensibly loud enough to be heard all the way at the other end of the table full of somewhat stuffy and stilted lawyer types said, “I’ll have the largest creme brulée in the restaurant, please. I’d like an entire vat of creme brulée brought here to me as soon as humanly possible. You can just bring it out in a trough, I don’t even need a spoon. Thanks.”

Did everyone at the table laugh?

Yeah. It killed.

But.

Here is the thing that bothers me.

I had almost no control over whether I popped off like that. To call it a compulsion wouldn’t be going too far. Though I didn’t look around the table, I somehow divined that all attention at the table was on me. I also realized in the instant the server came to me that no one had really ordered a “real” dessert. My brain just put it all together and blew out with a relatively funny quip. I’m not sure I could have just ordered dessert like a “normal” person.

Really.

I had to make my dessert order funny in some way.

On the one hand, “yay, me! I’m somewhat quick witted” and made everyone laugh. But on the other hand, sweet cracked caramelized sugar over custard, do I find the whole thing fundamentally disturbing.

I’ve always known that I use humor as both a disarming tactic to get people to like/love me and as a wall to protect and shield myself. A part of therapy for me has been realizing how just how high those bulwarks have grown over time and coming to grips with the fact that my entire being is built on this defensive shell, fashioned primarily out of humor shaped bricks and mortared with an urgent longing. I don’t even know exactly what I’m protecting myself from, though I’m pretty sure it has to do with (pardon me while I whip out my “therapy-speak” translation manual), “being emotionally connected with other people.” My inner core of emotions is so barricaded that I only know how to protect them, never long trot them out to peek at the rest of the world. I rarely allow myself to feel emotions, even ostensibly good emotions.

I talked to Reha about it later in the hotel room and how mortified I was.

“Well, I’m not sure I would have ever said that in front of my bosses and co-workers and their wives, but it wasn’t that bad. Everyone laughed. I might have preferred that you not do stand up comedy in front of those specific people, but it wasn’t too awkward or horrible.” [ed. note: like my public “performances” can be sometimes. (OK, oftentimes.)]

“Right, of course not. You are normal. That’s a part of my point. It wouldn’t have occurred to you to start riffing, but I’m freaking out over this realization that I don’t think I could stop myself.”

Though this is a way over the top metaphor, right now I feel a bit like I’m Abraham strapping his only and much loved son Isaac on the altar. In my somewhat sacrilegious parable, my humor has to be sacrificed in order to show lasting fidelity to emotional health. A giggling Isaac gets sliced open.

Oy vey! Drama much, Jon? Is this not the very definition of a “First World,” self-absorbed blogger type kerfluffle?

Well, yeah. Except that this is a big giant deal to me. Seriously, that’s how it feels to me. I’ve spent my entire life building this “funny” persona (for some decent reasons, I might add, though again, not dipping into those reasons now), but in order to be, I don’t know, a real person, I have to stab that humorous persona dead on the altar. This thing that happens where I only know really how to be funny and quippy has been a wonderful and warm and comfortable cloak to wear out in the world, such that I don’t even know how to put on different clothes or even if I own other jackets stored away deep in a box, hidden away and buried under layers of fortifications, but that cloak has ceased to make me happy.

Plus, the cloak is pure wool and it’s incredibly itchy.

See what I mean? This may be impossible for me.

I’m breaking this fit of highly personal emotional histrionics into two (or three, heaven help me) posts. More later. Though if I keep this up, I’ll have to re-direct Ransom Note Typography over to an emo-friendly LiveJournal account. *rim shot*

Anyway. Conclusion coming.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

A Dark Force

There is a irresistible force in the Universe. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be mollified or bargained with. You can’t sweet talk your way out of it. It is hard. It is real and it is powerful beyond belief.

You know what I’m talking about, right?

The mini-bar at a swanky hotel.

IT CALLS TO ME.

I’m am currently sitting across from a hotel mini bar in a swanky hotel.

I’m staring at it.

It’s staring back.

I swear to you, I can hear it whispering to me, “Come to me, open me, behold my mighty and tiny bottles of gin and bloody mary mix and weep with joy.”

A can of Diet Coke for $3.75. It must be the Diet Coke the gods themselves drink, mustn’t it?

A ridiculously teeny jar of macadamia nuts for $11. Think of what wondrous delights contained in that sealed jar!

A disposable Fuji QuickSnap camera labeled “for my memories” that weighs in at $15. Dear heaven above, that plastic lens surely captures pictures better than anything a mere mortal could purchase at any reputable camera shop. It’s film, too! What joy!

Anyway.

I now owe the Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs approximately $477.39 in mini-bar charges.

And I’ll be here until Saturday. Who needs a 401K?

At least I’ll have plenty of pictures of me half drunk on bad cabernet sauvignon and covered in tiny bottles of booze and dribbling pistachio nut husks.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Let’s Make a Sandwich

The 5 Year Old Makes Her Own Sandwich, originally uploaded by zuhl.

I was in the shower this morning and Ellis decided to be helpful and make her own sandwich.

In her words: “The jelly just went everywhere, Daddy.”

You don’t say…

Monday, September 15, 2008

I’ll Be Back

I’m having a weird couple weeks (again), so I’ll be back later this week.

In the meantime, this knocks my socks off:

Monday, September 08, 2008

Look Back in Bewilderment

Fixate on this for a moment.

The Love Boat ran on TV for TEN seasons. Ten. Freaking. Years.

I’m not even sure I can wrap my head around how it must have been for the writers (and producers, directors, actors, etc.) in the last year or so of that show. The main cast was all but gone, they’d run through almost every conceivable plot line and quality had obviously not been seen in the building since the late 70s. It must have been hell.

Producer #1: We got picked up for another season!

Producer #2: You have GOT to be kidding me. This must be how Faust felt as his contract came due. You’re serious?

Producer #1: Yep. I just got off the phone with my agent. We are on for another year. I can’t believe it either.

Producer #2: But all of the major stars are gone! Sure, Gavin is still here, he doesn’t have anything better to do, but we offered Fred a wheelbarrow full of money and he’s not coming back. Says he wants to run for Congress or something. Whatever. And Ted is sick and tired of being the happy, hippy black bartender. He’s not coming back even if we let him captain the ship.

Producer #1: Really, he didn’t go for the “Captain Stubbing is down, call Isaac plot line!”?

Producer #2: No chance.

Producer #1: What about Charo? What if we got her a gig as the new Cruise Director?

Producer #2: No go. The cuchi-cuchi boat has sailed.

Producer #1: Well, I’m totally stuck. I’m not sure there is enough coke in Columbia to get me through this season. What the hell are we going to write? We’ve done everything!

Producer #2: I know. What about another Jimmie Walker as a ghost episode? That killed!

Producer #1: Not gonna do that. I had to choke back my spleen on that one. I can’t do it.

Producer #2: OK. I just got off the phone with my agent. We are getting killed as soon as they can find a mid-season replacement for us. So it’ll be like three episodes, plus a Christmas special.

Producer #1: Screw that. We’ll do two and stretch the Christmas one out as a two-parter.

Producer #2: Excellent plan. Oh, thank you, sweet release of death.

On a personal note, I used to watch this show RELIGIOUSLY as a boy. I had a huge boyhood crush on Lauren Tewes and when she left the show, I was CRUSHED. Also, if you spend even ten wasted minutes perusing the cast lists of those ten seasons, you’ll note that it reads like a “who’s who” of TV (and some movie) stars from the late 70s and early 80s. Crazy.

Also, please, DO NOT waste your time perusing the imdb pages for The Love Boat. I like you too much to know that you are wasting your life and time on something like that.

My guess, every TV age will have one of these kinds of shows. Deliciously bad, but appeals to a certain demographic. See Zack and Cody and their moronic Suite Life in 15-20 years.

 

Novus

Proximus

 

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Help Wanted
• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• A Word from the Small Person in the House
• RNT Product Review: Chocolate Mix Skittles Left Me Sterile!
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• Letters from a Homeowner to His General Contractor
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.